Edmonton dad who made child porn imprisoned for 12 years

EDMONTON - An Edmonton father who created and distributed child pornography involving his infant daughter has been sentenced to 12 years in prison.

The 39-year-old, who cannot be identified to protect his daughter’s identity, began to sexually assault his daughter in 2008, when she was three years old and still in diapers. He photographed and videotaped the sexual encounters over a period of three years until he had a library of more than 200 images, many of which he shared on the Internet with other viewers of child pornography.

His crimes only stopped when he was arrested in September 2011.

The father of three pleaded guilty earlier this year to a number of charges involving sexual assault and child pornography.

Provincial court Judge Elizabeth Johnson called the crimes “disturbing” in a written decision released Tuesday afternoon.

“The offender chose the youngest and consequently the most vulnerable and voiceless member of his family as the target of his assaultive behaviour. Her age and position in the family placed her completely under the offender’s control,” she wrote. “The offender chose his youngest daughter as his sexual plaything.”

Court heard that it is not known how many times the man had sexual encounters with his daughter. The abuse against the child took a variety of forms and occurred in different rooms of the family home. Occasionally, the father would appear with her in the images. At times, he dressed her up in black stockings or a mask designed to look like a cat.

The father never directly sexually abused his older daughter or stepdaughter, but filmed both of them in the bathroom of the family home with a hidden camera when they were 13 and 18 years old. He also videotaped a friend of his stepdaughter without her knowledge while she was in the bathroom. Again, the father shared these images on the Net.

“It smacks of voyeurism,” Johnson wrote.

The father was eventually caught when images of his daughter showed up on computers in Europe. Investigators in Italy found the images during a child porn investigation. Believing the images had come from an Edmonton address, police contacted investigators with the Internet child exploitation unit of the Alberta Law Enforcement Response Team on Sept. 23, 2011.

Police went to the Edmonton home shortly after and arrested the father when he arrived. Police executed a search warrant at the home and seized a laptop, two computers and a BlackBerry.

Court heard that the children’s mother never knew about the abuse. They had been married since 1998.

In online chats with other collectors of child pornography, “the offender indicated that he was looking for opportunities for sexual contact with his children when his wife was not around,” Johnson wrote.

The mother told court that her youngest child will not speak to her about the abuse, but does attend regular counselling.

In one police interview, the child told an investigator that her father “does things to her that makes her angry when she had to do that ‘stuff’ when she is tired.”

More than 1,700 images of child pornography were found on the father’s laptop. Roughly 200 of them involved his daughter.

The father had no prior criminal record but is now registered as a sex offender. He cannot contact his children during his prison sentence.

Once released, he is banned from any public places where children gather or being in a position of trust over a child.

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